PROPOSAL Management
The Darker Side of Persuasion
The Darker Side of
Persuasion:
STANLEY MILGRAM’S EXPERIMENTS ON OBEDIENCE
TO AUTHORITY
By Dr. Jayme A. Sokolow
In the 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram carried out a series of innovative electric shock experiments that dramatically showed how persuasion in modern society can result from obedience
to authority. His laboratory experiments have profound implications for proposal professionals.
VARIETIES OF PERSUASION
From ancient times to the present, the art of persuasion
has been hotly debated. In classical Athens, Plato and Aristotle
lampooned the Sophists, who were the Dale Carnegies of
their time. The Sophists believed that ordinary men could
be taught to be persuasive orators and effective legislators,
for a fee. Aristotle, in contrast, argued that rhetorical persuasion was a difficult skill to master because it usually
developed out of a combination of emotional empathy, logical and factual arguments, and style, “since it is not enough
to know what to say(one must also know how to say it.”
Although most proposal professionals have not read
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, they would probably agree with him.
Successful proposals usually present solutions to vendors
that are carefully organized, confident, and filled with plenty
of factual evidence to support their arguments.
Today, the debate continues. When problems are routine
and easily recognized, persuasion is often unnecessary
because the solutions are obvious. When problems become
more difficult and there is no widespread agreement about
solutions, persuasion becomes a more complex art.
Persuasion usually involves conflict, for if people agree,
they do not need to be persuaded. To overcome conflict
and reach agreement, as Aristotle pointed out, people must
demonstrate to each other that they share a common viewpoint. In other words, identification is an important element of persuasion.
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THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENTS
Stanley Milgram (1933-84), a social psychologist, performed a series of experiments in the 1960s about persuasion and obedience that upset many people because they
grimly illustrated the darker side of persuasion that we
believe cannot occur among free people in a democratic
society. According to him, persuasion often occurs simply
because we identify with an authority figure, whom
Milgram defines as someone who appears to have a legitimate right to exercise control over us.
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The Darker Side of Persuasion
PROPOSAL Management
His experiments involved adult volunteers who carried out
a series of painful acts in clear conflict with their consciences. Milgram wanted to know how far participants
would comply with the experimenter’s instructions before
refusing to inflict further pain upon someone else.
To his chagrin, he discovered that “ordinary people, simply
doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on
their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive
process.” Based on his famous experiments, Milgram concluded that when we are asked “to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively
few people have the resources to resist authority.”
At Harvard, Yale, and the City University of New York,
Milgram spent more than two decades studying group
behavior in cities, the nature of conformity, and the impact
of television on social behavior. His interest in conformity
led him to devise a series of experiments about obedience
that were memorably described in Obedience to Authority:
An Experimental View (1974).
Milgram’s first experiment was conducted at the
Interaction Laboratory of Yale University. Through a newspaper advertisement, he recruited 40 men from New
Haven, Connecticut, to participate in a “scientific study of
memory and learning.” The experiment took one hour, and
volunteers received four dollars plus fifty cents for carfare.
Forty percent of the volunteers were professionals, another 40 percent were white-collar workers, and the remainder
were skilled and unskilled workers. Forty percent of them
were in their forties, 40 percent were in their thirties, and
the rest were in their twenties.
After two people arrived at the laboratory, an impassive 31year-old man in a gray laboratory coat firmly explained that
the study would be concerned with the effects of punish-
The Laboratory setting had a sophisticated array of test
equipment.
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“Could you hurt me?” Surprisingly, the
study showed that most people could.
ment on learning. This man, whom Milgram called the
experimenter, announced that one of them would be designated the teacher and the other the learner. With his scientific dress, impassive demeanor, and control over the experiment, he was Milgram’s authority figure. The experimenter
had the two people draw lots to determine their roles, but
volunteers did not know that the drawing had been rigged
so that the volunteer would always be the teacher.
A portly and mild-mannered 47-year-old accountant played
the role of the learner in Milgram’s experiments. The experimenter led him into a room separated from the volunteer
by a glass partition. He sat down in a chair while the experimenter strapped his arms to prevent excessive movement,
attached an electrode to his wrist, and applied an electrode
paste to “avoid blisters and burns.” The experimenter told
him that he was supposed to learn a list of word pairs.
Whenever the learner made an error, the teacher would
give him progressively stronger electronic shocks.
APMP Fall 1999
PROPOSAL Management
The Darker Side of Persuasion
An illustration of Milgram’s Shock Generator Face.
Volunteers were seated at a table in front of a large generator that had 30 lever switches labeled in 15-volt increments from 15 to 450 volts. At the upper left-hand corner,
the device was labeled “SHOCK GENERATOR: TYPE ZLB,
DYSON INSTRUMENT COMPANY, WALTHAM, MASS.
OUTPUT 15 VOLTS—450 VOLTS.”
The teacher read a series of word pairs with four terms to
the learner, who indicated which of the four terms had been
paired with the first word by pressing one of four switches
that lit up numbers in an answer box above the generator.
The experimenter told the teacher to administer a shock to
the learner each time he gave an incorrect response.
Every four switches had the following descriptions above
them in ascending order of voltage: Slight Shock, Moderate
Shock, Strong Shock, Very Strong Shock, Intense Shock,
Extreme Intensity Shock, and Danger: Severe Shock. Two
more switches were marked XXX. When volunteers hit a
switch, a bright red light would show above it. They also
heard an electronic buzzing sound, saw an electric blue
light flashing that was labeled “voltage energizer,” heard
relay clicks, and saw a voltage meter swing to the right as
the voltage increased.
Teachers were also advised to “move one level higher on
the shock generator each time the learner gives a wrong
answer” and to announce the voltage level right before they
administered the shock. When teachers reached 450 volts,
the experimenter instructed them to continue shocking the
learner two more times. Only then would the experiment
conclude.
Before the test began, the teacher received a sample 45volt shock on his wrist by hitting the third switch on the
generator. Milgram devised this part of the experiment to
show teachers that the generator was real. The generator,
however, was not actually connected to the learner, who
had been trained to act as if he were being shocked by it.
Milgram’s Shock Generator.
The “Victim” is strapped down and the electrodes are
applied.
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The “Subject” is given a sample shock of 45 volts.
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The Darker Side of Persuasion
PROPOSAL Management
stronger shocks by identifying with the experimenter or
end the experiment by identifying with the learner.
Before Milgram first began his experiments, he asked 39
psychiatrists, 31 Yale students, and 40 middle class adults
to predict how volunteers would respond to his experiment.
All three groups estimated that volunteers would respond
with a mean maximum shock level ranging from about 120
to 150 volts and then stop. Only four people predicted that
volunteers would administer shocks as high as 300 volts.
“Shocking” the learner.
If teachers asked whether they should continue, the experimenter would always respond in the following sequence:
“Please continue” or “Please go on.”
“The experiment requires that you continue.”
“It is absolutely essential that you continue.”
“You have no other choice, you must go on.”
After a 300-volt shock, he
stopped answering questions.
In each experiment, the learner gave a predetermined
response to the word pair test of three wrong answers to
one correct answer. At first, Milgram thought that the learner
would not need to say anything when shocked because the
lights and noise from the generator would stop teachers
from increasing the voltage. When this did not occur,
Milgram had the learner respond when a 75-volt shock
occurred with simple grunts for the lower shocks to
anguished cries at 120 volts. At 180 volts, the learner cried
out, “I can’t stand the pain,” and at 270 volts, he screamed.
After a 300-volt shock, he stopped answering questions.
At the end of each session, volunteers learned that they
had not really administered any electrical shocks. Those
who obeyed the experimenter were told that their reactions were perfectly normal while disobedient volunteers
were commended for not shocking the learner. All of them
received a written report that described the experiment
along with a follow-up questionnaire.
THE RESULTS
Milgram designed the experiment to present volunteers
with a stark dilemma. They could administer increasing
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In the first experiment, where the learner uttered no
sounds, all 40 volunteers administered electrical shocks
ranging from 300 volts (Intense Shock) to 450 volts (XXX).
Twenty-six of them, or 65 percent, were willing to administer
the highest voltage. With voice feedback from the learner,
the mean maximum shock and obedience levels dropped only
slightly. When volunteers heard the learner, eight of them
stopped before 195 volts (Strong Shock), but 25 were still willing to administer 450 volts in response to incorrect answers.
Milgram designed 18 basic situations to determine a volunteer’s willingness to obey the experimenter. Seventeen of
the situations involved men. In the only experiment involving women, 14 of them administered shocks between 150
and 330 volts while 26 were willing to give the learner a
450-volt shock. Even when Milgram moved from prestigious Yale University to a shabby office in downtown
Bridgeport, Connecticut, volunteers continued to use the
high shock levers.
Almost 93 percent of the volunteers
administered 450-volt shocks.
The highest rate of obedience occurred in an experiment
with two teachers, one of which had been coached to
administer high intensity shocks. Almost 93 percent of the
volunteers (37 out of 40) followed by administering 450volt shocks.
MILGRAM’S CONCLUSIONS
Milgram’s experiments elicited howls of protests. Critics
complained that he had deliberately deceived his volunteers and unethically exploited them. Milgram responded
by arguing that people disliked his experiments primarily
because of their results. “If everyone had broken off at light
or moderate shock,” he argued, “this would be a very reassuring finding, and who would protest?”
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Milgram pointed out that his volunteers were not sadists
but ordinary men and women. They disliked participating
in the experiments and were greatly relieved to discover
that the learners had not really been shocked.
For example, when one volunteer administered a 180-volt
shock, he shook his head and had this conversation with
the experimenter:
Volunteer: “I can’t stand it. I’m not going to kill that
man in there. You hear him hollering?”
Experimenter: “As I told you before, the shocks may
be painful, but —”
Volunteer: “But he’s hollering. He can’t stand it.
What’s going to happen to him?”
Experimenter: “The experiment requires that you
continue, Teacher.”
Volunteer: “Aah, but, unh, I’m not going to get that
man sick in there…. know what I mean?”
Experimenter: “Whether the learner likes it or not,
we must go on, through all the word pairs.”
Volunteer: “I refuse to take the responsibility. He’s
in there hollering!”
Experimenter: “It’s absolutely essential that you
continue, Teacher.”
Volunteer: “There’s too many left here [referring to
the word pairs]; I mean, Jeez, if he gets
them wrong, there’s too many of them left. I
mean, who’s going to take the responsibility
if anything happens to that gentleman?”
Experimenter: “I’m responsible for anything that
happens to him. Continue, please.”
Volunteer: “All right. . . .”
Based on his experiments, Milgram came to a disheartening
conclusion. “With numbing regularity good people were
seen to knuckle under to the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in
everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the
trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions,
and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation into performing harsh acts.”
Milgram further argued that in modern society people tended
to identify with authority as long as it was considered legitimate. For him, this was the real meaning of morality in
modern society — the abrogation of individual will to
authority, regardless of its consequences.
APMP Fall 1999
The Darker Side of Persuasion
Milgram discovered that there were occasions
when volunteers would defy the experimenter.
They were more likely to disobey under the following conditions:
•
Close proximity to the learner (40 percent
administered 450 volts).
•
Touch proximity to the learner (30 percent
administered 450 volts).
•
Experimenter absent from the room during
the test (20 percent administered 450 volts).
•
Volunteers choose their own shock levels
(2.5 percent administered 450 volts).
•
Learner demands to be shocked (all volunteers
stopped at 150 volts).
•
Ordinary man acts as experimenter (20 percent
administered 450 volts).
•
Experimenter demonstrates how the test
works (all volunteers stopped at 150 volts).
•
Two experimenters issue contradictory commands (all volunteers stopped at 165 volts).
•
Three volunteers administer the test with two
rebelling against the experimenter (10 percent
administered 450 volts).
In a 1976 interview in Psychology Today, Milgram discussed
the implications of his experiments. According to him, “in
order to have civilization you must have some degree of
authority. Once that authority is established, it does not
matter much whether the system is called a democracy or
a dictatorship: the common person responds to governmental policies with expected obedience, whether in Nazi
Germany or democratic America.”
In order to have civilization you must
have some degree of authority.
Every society, Milgram pointed out, must have some structure of authority, but the range of freedom varies from
place to place. The Holocaust “demonstrated the worst
excess of obedience we’ve seen. But American democracy
also has instituted policies that were severe and inhumane:
the destruction of American Indians, the enslavement of
blacks, the incarceration of the Japanese during the Second
World War, [and] Vietnam. There are always people who
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PROPOSAL Management
The Darker Side of Persuasion
obey, who carry out the policies. When authority goes awry,
individuals do not seem to have enough resources to put on
the brakes… Morality, as well as blind obedience, comes
from authority.”
Despite our propensity to identify with authority regardless
of its malevolence, Milgram thought we might be able to
control its excesses. He argued that we had to become
more aware of the “problem of indiscriminate submission to
authority,” which he hoped would be better understood as
a result of his experiments. Since people will obey even
depraved authorities, Milgram felt that we had a special
obligation to “place in positions of authority those most
likely to be humane and wise.” Milgram also believed that
people were quite inventive and hoped that we might one
day develop a political structure that would give “conscience a better chance against errant authority.”
Although Milgram sounded cautiously optimistic in his
interview, his experiments can hardly engender much
hope. In his laboratory he discovered what the German
refugee and political philosopher Hannah Arendt called the
“banality of evil” when describing Adolf Eichmann and his
fellow Nazis.
Both Arendt and Milgram argued that our vaunted morality
is really rather ephemeral. Ordinary people can become
extraordinarily inhumane when obeying others. We are not
all potential Nazis, but too many of us will blindly identify
with authority.
MILGRAM’S EXPERIMENTS AND PROPOSAL
PROFESSIONALS
In our better moments, we would like to believe that persuasion is part of a rational dialogue that leads to agreement.
Logic, factual evidence, and style, as Aristotle might say,
should be important elements in any persuasive argument.
Nonetheless, most proposal professionals have probably
experienced their own versions of Milgram’s experiments.
Abusive management styles are sometimes used in the
workplace. Are they appropriate?
In this high-pressured environment,
sometimes we may treat our proposal
teams in ways we later regret.
In our more candid moments, we might see a part of ourselves in Milgram’s experimenter. When we manage proposals, we are authority figures to those around us.
Proposal development is often a highly stressful activity
with its pressing deadlines, long hours of work, and huge
36
contracts at stake. In this high-pressured environment,
sometimes we may treat our proposal teams in ways we
later regret.
Finally, there is a more controversial and profound issue for
proposal professionals that goes to the heart of Arendt and
Milgram’s deepest concerns—we can be discretely silent or
very inventive when obeying authority. How many of us
have ever had moral qualms about the Statements of Work
in our proposals and brought them to the attention of our
superiors? How many proposal teams have resigned
because they did not want to become involved in doing proposals to make napalm, guided missiles, nuclear bombs, or
nerve gas? And, how many proposal teams have devised
persuasive arguments for vendors to purchase products or
services that actually harm the environment or injure people?
To raise these unsettling questions is not to equate proposal professionals with Nazis. In fact, Milgram argued that the
best way to avoid unthinking obedience to authority is to be
aware of the problem and to raise these kinds of questions
in the workplace. Undoubtedly, some proposal professionals
struggle with them on a daily basis.
Based on his experiments, Milgram concluded that obedience to authority does not usually “take the form of a dramatic confrontation of opposed wills or philosophies but is
embedded in a larger atmosphere where social relationships, career aspirations, and technical routines set the
dominant tone.” All of us have developed very practical
inhibitions against disobeying authority. How do we develop similar inhibitions against obeying abusive or malevolent
authority? This is the question Milgram wanted us to constantly ask ourselves.
Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality
of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963.
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1969.
Milgram, Stanley. Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.
New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
Milgram, Stanley. The Individual in a Social World. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1977.
Jayme A. Sokolow, Ph.D., is founder and president of The
Development Source, Inc., a proposal services company located in
Wheaton, Maryland, that works both with businesses and nonprofit
organizations. He is also Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of
Proposal Management. He can be reached at [email protected].
APMP Fall 1999
Proposal Management is the professional journal of the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), an organization dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences and technology of proposal management and promoting the
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